Related Stories

Yoga teacher Zali Nash explains how to lose weight for good in this extract from her book Enough Already! How To Lose Weight Once and For All and Reclaim Your Life.

I was fed up with dieting. I was frustrated and bemused seeing my friends, colleagues, students and myself go on a diet, lose weight and then put it all back on with a dollop of extra fat on the side for good measure. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to lose three kilos or one hundred, studies from universities such as UCLA have shown books and programs that just deal with diet and exercise will help you lose weight, but they won’t keep the weight off long term. In fact, numerous studies suggest, you will end up putting extra weight on. The catch is, that until you address the issues behind the weight gain …I mean the real, meaty bones of the issues, you can try every program and read every book, but you will still find yourself putting on the weight again and then some.

HAVE YOUR SAY:

As a yoga teacher, I have worked with scores of people who are struggling with their weight. I have witnessed and felt the pain, the frustration, the anger and the blame that comes when they keep self sabotaging their own attempts to lose weight. What I am always really listening to, is an unsatiable hunger to come back to the true self, a desire to shed the kilos of pain that they may be sheltering behind; to drop the layers of guilt over deeds gone wrong. For many I am listening to an ache to strip off once and for all the drudgery of an unfullfilled life.

The inspiration for this book came from a beautiful young woman. Let’s call her Sarah. I worked with Sarah for about eighteen months as her boss in my corporate life. She was immensely over-weight. She was always on a different diet. Slurping away at different green goos and chemically laden chocolate shakes. She had pictures on her desk of a slimmer, glowing self that exuded confidence and joy. I could see the pain she was in, hidden behind a sassy, bold facade. We did lots of work on developing her profesional skills at that time. She had motivation and ambition to burn. Yet, she was moody, self sabotaging and underneath it all, red raw and aching from the pain she was in. I eventually found out that she was raped.

It all made sense to me. The layers of fat kept her safe from straying male eyes. The additional chunkiness was there to snuggle into; to comfort her. To keep the pain stuffed down deep inside. Her moodiness was her true self’s tantrums at what she was doing to herself. She ached and hungered to become all that she could. I never took the chance to work this through with Sarah. It wasn’t my role at the time. So this one’s for you Sarah.

The two ways to get the chunk off the body are without doubt:

Exercise.

Food.

We look at both of these sections from a new, empowering perspective, with execrsises that help address your attitude as well as the physical steps you can take to get the weight off. This is all done from a new and empowering perspective.

The most important bits to me; the bits that will make the skin shimmy with happiness, are the bits that KEEP the weight off and most importantly will hopefully bring you some joy.